haploid's comments

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you successfully work at home with a family?

I think you may have missed the point of my question. The OP is wondering how he can maintain his productivity with a little sprog monopolizing his time/attention( he was more diplomatic than that, but that's the crux of the issue ).

I then asked why he didn't consider this possible impact on his livelihood( the productivity aspect )before deciding to have a kid.

So, to use your response as a template, I would rewrite with the following:

Let's say in 10 years he fails to get his company off the ground because 4+ hours per day that would have been previously available to him to work on his project were not, due to the presence of a child. The kid has to take out student loans, parents who have nothing to show for 10 years of stress - and if the OP had to, he could take a second job and spend what would be kid-hours with his work.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Selling to Developers: Dealing with “I’ll do it myself”

Downvoted for downvoting a comment that merely strikes a personal, subjective pet peeve.

The comment added to the discussion, and the "protip" in question was a good point.

Last I checked, karma is to be given/taken due to quality of content, not whether or not it hurts your precious feelings.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Will successful Self-Taught Programmers please stand up?

I am primarily self taught( with some minor help from my father, when I was a child ). I don't work for any of the "cool" places you mentioned, but I do have a reasonably successful ecommerce business.

I did go to school, but I began programming tiny asm programs at ~8 years old out of my dad's 8086 book and my obsession with software expanded from there.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: If you had to choose, would it be your startup or significant other?

This is a question that usually resolves itself.

If your SO went into a relationship with someone who he/she knew was extremely passionate about building things, and they somehow expected this to "change", they are delusional, dishonest, or both.

Did you really want to spend the rest of your life with a delusional, dishonest, controlling individual anyway?

Yeah, didn't think so. In this event, you move on and find someone who doesn't try to hamstring your dreams and crush your soul. They do exist, and your life will be richer for it.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Stop Panhandling your Ideas

You're thinking 1999. Today it's different.

Now you have to have at least 10k twitter followers, at least 5k HN karma, posess at least one Arrington-stained blue dress, and win any number of other Silicon Valley popularity contests. It's all about "networking" nowadays.

Get with the times, man.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Stop Panhandling your Ideas

You're not the target audience of the article. It's referring more to the people who spend all day hanging out at the trendy SF cafes and going to all the "networking events", waiting around to catch the eye of anyone who works near Sand Hill Road, instead of actually getting shit done.

It sounds like you're getting shit done.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's best way to show YC Your Idea Is Worth Funding?

First of all, stop tailoring all your efforts to a single funding source. If you're going to invest the effort of putting together a pitch, make sure it is generic enough to be used on N other funding sources.

You have limited time to bring a product to market. I suggest spending this time developing the product and pursuing funding sources that have far less bubblicious attention than YC.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Hacker career change

If you already have an engineering degree and you are numerate, then pick up Knuth and start reading. After that, Abelson/Sussman.

It is advisable that you do this before picking up "Learn Ruby/Erlang/Clojure/node.js In 13 Seconds" or whatever the latest shiny toy is that the startup groupie kids are fapping to this month.

Between Knuth and Abelson you will have a solid foundation that 90% of web app hackers lack, and will likely be capable of becoming good with whatever tool you choose to use.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: .ly domain reseller suspended by SoftLayer citing US/UN Sanctions

Hahaha. Oh good ol' post-merger SoftLayer.

This is nothing new for them. They have a long history of violating their own TOS and shutting down customers, without warning, for arbitrary and capricious reasons, then blaming/citing someone else for "making" them do it.

See Wikileaks and SimpleCDN for the most visible examples; there are many more, though.

We left SL last year and couldn't be happier.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: How to damage your brand in one smooth shot - Way to GoDaddy

The motivation of pro-gun people generally falls into one of three categories:

1. Self/property protection 2. Fun/sport/hunting 3. Assertion of constitutional rights( and sometimes duty )

That said, this thread is in danger of political derailment.

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Leaving college to work on a startup?

You won't "come back and finish", or at least it's very unlikely. Your brain will never be more plastic than it is right now.

To echo the other comments here, what prevents you from working on your idea without dropping out? Is it the kind of project that requires 16 hour marathon hacking sessions every day for months on end?

haploid | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Depression, Loss of Motivation, Feeling Lost. Please Help

Good advice.

And after you're done with the chiropractor, check in with an acupuncturist, a touch therapist, a reflexologist, and a holistic bowel cleansing expert.

Do NOT do this until you've had your fortune told by a Tarot card reader, though! It's also advisable that you do not begin homeopathic treatment until Venus is aligned with Scorpio in transit to Pisces.

Depression is something that can only be cured if you detoxify your aura, so be sure to begin a daily pineapple-juice fasting regimen before emailing the undoubtedly medically qualified bpourriahi for the kind of life-saving diagnosis that Evil Corporate Big Medicine doesn't want you to know!

tl;dr: You are not a medical professional. Stop giving mystical new age quack advice to a person who could quite possibly have a real disorder.

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